As the old saying goes, when it rains it pours. NVIDIA
was performing beautifully thanks to aggressive pricing and performance of its
8000 series of graphics cards. It looked poised to leave competitor AMD
(formerly ATI) in the dust. However, the latest
round in graphics war has marked a dramatic turnaround with AMD's
4850 and 4870 outperforming NVIDIA's offerings at
a lower price.

That was not the end of the bad news from NVIDIA either. It announced
that it was facing a massive recall, due to overheating GPUs in notebook
computers. NVIDIA reported higher than average failures in both the
laptop GPUs and in laptop chipsets.

NVIDIA said that the chips and their packaging were made with materials that
proved to be too "weak". NVIDIA passes the blame to notebook
manufacturers, which it says contributes to the problem. Typically
notebooks have poorer ventilation and components concentrated in a smaller
space than desktop computers.

The result of the recalls is that NVIDIA will be taking a onetime charge of
$150M USD to $200M USD to cover the damages. It plans to use the money to
repair or replace defective parts. It also hopes to collect part of the
money from insurers it uses. However, it has acknowledged its problems
and switched the materials it uses.

The news has resulted in NVIDIA taking a beating on the stock market, sliding over
25 percent.

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